PEEKSKILL - In 1971, four local mothers got together to tackle the lack of medical care in their community. This week, one of those mothers was honored with a health-care center in her name.

The newly named Jeannette J. Phillips Health Center in Peekskill is the flagship facility of Hudson River HealthCare, a nonprofit federally qualified health center that provides services to patients at 30 sites in the region.

The Rev. Jeannette Phillips, a longtime Peekskill resident, played a key role in founding HRHCare in 1975. She currently serves as its executive vice president for community development and is the only surviving member of the original group of founding mothers.

The Rev. Jeannette Phillips is one of the founders of HRHCare, a network of health-care centers.(Photo11: Submitted)

Phillips, a mother of five, said families in the community were frustrated by the lack of local health-care services in the early 1970s, with many traveling by bus for hours — children in tow — just to see a doctor who took Medicaid patients or accepted their insurance plans.

But it wasn’t just mothers who despaired over the lack of services in Peekskill. Community members of all ages were frustrated, said Phillips. At one of the group’s early meetings, a man with stitches in his head worried who would take them out, she recalled: "The hospital said, 'Go to your private doctor.' 'I don’t have a doctor. Where does that leave me?’”

Phillips — along with the late Willie Mae Jackson, Mary Woods and Pearl Woods — spearheaded the creation of the Peekskill Area Ambulatory Health Center in July 1975 with the help of a small federal grant. The center remained the flagship facility of HRHCare as it expanded to 10 counties in the Hudson Valley and Long Island.

Anne Nolon, CEO of HRHCare, credits Phillips — the organization’s first board president — with creating a network of health-care sites that provide services to tens of thousands of patients each year.

For Phillips, having her name officially attached to the health center she helped create is quite humbling, she said.

“It truly has been a community effort, in terms of making sure, as we so nobly always quote, that health care is a right and a privilege,’’ she said. “We’ve certainly seen that come to fruition in these 40 years.”